If the LORD of hosts had not left us a few survivors, we should have been like Sodom, and become like Gomorrah. – The first sentence which the people have spoken – it is factual but sounds like a winge!
Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! – God uses their description of themselves to answer them!
“What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. – the purpose of the sacrifices was to indicate sorrow and repentance not to satisfy God, Who after all owns the cattle on a thousand hills! The worshippers were faking it!
“When you come to appear before me, who has required of you this trampling of my courts? – God had never ordered false religiosity or hypocrisy!
Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations— I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. – God says ‘stop this charade. I can endure it no longer!’
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them.
When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. – ‘Enough is enough’ God says ‘Pray as much as you like, offer all the blood offerings that you want to but I’m deaf and blind to your quasi-devotion!’
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil,
learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause. – as washing makes the body clean so a similar thing is needed not to achieve eternal forgiveness but to get God to begin to listen! Meaningless baptism isn’t washing but sincere repentance is the washing which this passage is talking about. Repentance means much more than sorrow it means changing life’s direction. Here God lists stop being guided by evil, do good, be just, particularly to the widow and the fatherless! In inference it is as James says in his epistle ‘Declaration of what is in fact shallow faith, unsubstantiated by action, counts for very little!
- Proverbs 21: 27: “The sacrifice of the wicked is detestable; how much more when brought with evil intent?” – the evil intent is an attempt to hoodwink God!
Prayer: Help me to remember that You are a heart reader and not a lip reader, Oh my God.
As I read it! 